Friday, July 19, 2013

Review: Orleans

Why I Read It: I haven't read anything dystopic in a while, so I figured I would give this a go. There was also quite a bit of buzz about this one.

A Quick Intro: It has been years since a series of incredibly destructive tropical storms, and a disease called Delta Fever led to the quarantine of New Orleans and the surrounding area. The survivors are divided into tribes by blood type (this slows the spread of the fever), and blood hunting is rampant, since blood transfusions are the only way to slow the advance of the infection (for those infected). Fen is and O-positive, and after her tribe is attacked, only she and a newborn escape. Daniel comes over the quarantine wall looking for a way to clear the Fever, expecting a few struggling survivors, not a primitive civilization.

What I Thought: I wasn't really a fan of this one. I found that I really wasn't attached to the story, or the characters. They just irked me. I'm not saying that they weren't characters with depth, or that they were poorly written, I just found them annoying. I couldn't really root for them.

My other issue was that it didn't really feel like there was a climax. It was just one random event after another, to the point where, when there was some sort of a revelation, betrayal, or some such, I just sort of responded with "Oh, well, another thing happened, there is still basically no hope. Huh. Too bad.". The plot sort of meandered.

There wasn't much hope in this book. This is more a personal preference, but I prefer there to be some sort of hope in my stories. A reason to carry on reading. This book became sort of... resigned. Which didn't really work for me.

So in the end, this book was kind of hard slogging for me. By the end I felt like I was reading for the sake of reading words on a page. I wasn't really curious about how the book would end. This wasn't really a book for me.